Timestamp #134: Resurrection of the Daleks

This story gets dark fast and leaves a lot of room to think in the end.

In a disused modern day alley, several men in anachronistic costumes run from police officers and their machine pistols. When the runners (and one innocent bystander) are shot down, they are transmatted to a nearby starship. There are two survivors as the execution squad beams away, and they return to the warehouse to warn others only to find that the time corridor has been closed. They are spooked by a remaining executioner who kills one, but the other (a man named Stien) escapes. The executioner returns to the starship and the crew sets course for a nearby prison station, assuming an attack posture.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS has been careening out of control through a time corridor since the end of Frontios. The danger of destruction is quite real (so says the Cloister Bell), but in moments the time capsule stabilizes and materializes near the murder alley. The travelers set out in search of the time corridor they detected, but instead, they find Stien. They investigate the warehouse, lose Turlough under mysterious circumstances, and find a military bomb disposal squad.

All things considered, can we call the exchange even? I guess not.

The battlecruiser arrives at the prison station and the latter is no match for the starship’s might. The station is invaded by Daleks who make short work of the defending humans, but they are driven back by surprise mines in the corridors. The invading humans flood the airlock with gas and drive the prison staff back, and an attempt to destroy the prisoner the Daleks seek fails. We also find out that Turlough has transmatted to the Dalek ship.

The prisoner of interest is Davros. As the prison crew works to destroy him, they are overcome by the face-melting side effects of the gas and a human raiding party. Back on Earth, the Doctor and the military compare notes before being confronted by a Dalek who traveled through the time corridor. Tegan is injured, and the Doctor advises to shoot for the eyestalk and after the Dalek is blinded, the soldiers toss it out a second-floor window and watch it explode. At this point, the Daleks know that the Doctor is on the battlefield.

Four human survivors prowl the passageways of the prison station in an attempt to mount a resistance, possibly by way of the station’s self-destruct sequence. Meanwhile, Turlough finds the chamber housing the corpses from the story’s prologue and nearly loses his lunch, the Doctor cleans up the Dalek in the alley, and the invaders revive Davros at his prison cell. Davros is incensed to learn that the Movellan-Dalek war did not go well for his children and that the Daleks now rely on human allies to survive. The Movellans developed a virus to attack the Daleks, forcing the Daleks to seek Davros and develop a cure.

On Earth, the soldier watching the Dalek remains doesn’t notice movement under the pieces and parts and only realizes his mistake when the Kaled mutant strangles him. The hunt is on for the murderous wayward blob, which is further complicated by the arrival of an execution squad. On the ship, the Daleks find Turlough skulking, recognize him as the Doctor’s companion, and allow him to roam to use him as bait. Soon after, he passes several stealth checks (good DEX score?) and ends up on the prison station, but is soon intercepted by the resistance survivors.

Those Dalek-inspired helmets for the human invaders are something else.

The Doctor’s team hunt for the Kaled mutant, finding a stray cat before locating the alien and gunning it down after it takes a chunk out of another soldier.

(And, yes, the Doctor is using a gun again so we can put down that old myth. TV Tropes has done some pretty good work on that already. Let’s just say that the Doctor doesn’t use guns often and call it good.)

The Doctor and Stien head back to the TARDIS to investigate the time corridor as the soldier who was bitten by the Kaled goes bonkers. The search for the infected goes south when three Daleks appear in the warehouse and, with help from the execution squad, take everyone hostage. The TARDIS materializes on the Dalek ship, and Stien double-crosses the Doctor. The Daleks move in for the kill, but the Supreme Dalek puts that to a halt. Apparently, the Doctor and his companions are to be cloned (on a bed of bubble wrap nonetheless) and used as an assassin against the Time Lord High Council.

The resistance team finds the self-destruct mechanism and begins working on it. To avoid becoming a martyr, Turlough suggests using the time corridor to escape the blast. Turlough joins resistance member Lieutenant Mercer to scout the path out, but the way to the time corridor is swarming with Daleks, and when they return to the self-destruct chamber they find it under siege. Turlough deduces that Davros is still on the station. He’s right, of course, and the Dalek leader is slowly building an army of humans and Daleks using a mind-control device. The resistance team in the chamber is destroyed and Davros begins an analysis of the virus which has been stored in the warehouse all this time (and explains the location’s importance in the story).

Back on Earth, Tegan and Professor Laird (the military team’s scientist) engineer an escape from the execution squad before they are transferred to the Dalek ship. Tegan escapes as Laird remains behind to sell the bluff. Laird is captured and Tegan is pursued by the executioners for a short time before being captured herself. Laird is killed attempting escape and Tegan is forced into the time corridor. When she arrives on the other side, she finds Mercer and Turlough and begins plotting the Doctor’s rescue.

In the cloning chamber, the Doctor’s procedure is slowed by the emergence of the real Stien’s memories. Stien begins downloading the Doctor’s memories but short circuits as the real Stien emerges. The Doctor and Stien meet up with Tegan, Mercer, and Turlough, and the group returns to the TARDIS after destroying the tapes housing the Doctor’s memories. The Doctor leaves the companions in the safety of the TARDIS and sets out to kill Davros, joined in his reluctant and heavy task by Mercer and Stien.

The Doctor arrives in the lab and takes aim on Davros, but his gruesome task is interrupted by an argumentative distraction by Davros and the re-emergence of Stien’s Dalek programming. With Mercer dead, Stien runs off into the station, leaving the Doctor locked out of the lab and separated from Davros. Back on the TARDIS, the time capsule initiates a time-delayed flight (which the Doctor programmed) through the time corridor to the warehouse (which the Doctor did not program). They arrive in time for an all-out (and one-sided) battle between the Daleks and the remaining soldiers, but they end up snagging a sample of the Movellan virus before seeking refuge in TARDIS. During the battle, the Daleks split allegiances and create two warring factions: The Imperial Daleks led by Davros and the Renegade Daleks led by the Supreme Dalek.

A Dalek civil war cannot end well.

Stien arms the self-destruct while the Doctor returns to Earth and plants bombs on various Daleks before joining the companions in the TARDIS. Back on the station, Davros unleashes the Movellan virus against the Renegade Daleks, killing the Daleks and (in an unforeseen consequence) himself. Similarly, the Doctor introduces the virus into the warehouse, killing every Dalek inside.

The Supreme Dalek contacts the Doctor and promises him that the Dalek race will survive. Before the Daleks can implement this plan, the self-destruct triggers, destroying the station and the docked ship. The threat is over with the exception of the surviving execution squad. Gotta leave room for a sequel, right?

The Doctor and Turlough prepare to leave, but Tegan hesitates. She is disgusted by the massacre and can no longer follow the Doctor in his current mindset. In a heartbreaking farewell, she runs away, and her parting words remind the Doctor of who he truly is. Dejected, he and Turlough depart, and as the TARDIS fades from view, Tegan returns to tell the absent Doctor that she will indeed miss him.

“Brave heart, Tegan.” She certainly did have that in this story, as it takes a lot to tell off the Doctor when he’s really screwing things up. My appreciation of Tegan has been up and down through her tenure on the TARDIS, and this story didn’t do a lot by removing her from the plot for a significant portion of the story, but her exit highlighted her strength. She brought heart to the team, and she’ll be missed.

She also highlights a small trend in the show this season. Every one of the stories in the Twenty-First Series have showcased a lot of death, and Warriors of the Deep highlighted the start of the trend with a plaintive plea: “There should have been another way.” Tegan slapped the Doctor with her farewell, reminding him that he can be more. That he should be more.

He’s going to need to be more now that he’s alone with Turlough. I don’t like Turlough.

On the story side, setting aside everything already mentioned, I enjoyed the serial and how well the story was constructed. The plot moved efficiently and kept me engaged. The big downside was the magnitude of the deaths, especially the obviously gratuitous ones like Laird, the innocent bystander in the alley, and the treasure hunter at the docks.

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

This one highlighted two things about this era. Eric Saward loves mercenaries and he loves lots of death. The trend that you’ve been seeing in season 21 is his influence. John-Nathan Turner as a fan turned producer loved Easter eggs and call backs, which is why you get shots of all those companions.

Interestingly, Leela is not in the scenes shown on the monitor. Now it might just be because we cut back and forth that we just missed her, but I like to think that since Leela was on Gallifrey that the Doctor was purposefully holding back his memories of her, so that if the Daleks were successful in sending a Doctor-clone to Gallifrey that its lack of knowledge of Leela would be an obvious clue that something was wrong.

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